


Token Arguments

by ifdragonscouldtalk



Series: Whumptober 2019 [5]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Leonard "Bones" McCoy, BAMF Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, Birthday Gift Fic, Blood, Blood and Injury, Declarations Of Love, Hurt Spock (Star Trek), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Spock And Jim Love Each Other, Whumptober 2019, spock whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22559920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifdragonscouldtalk/pseuds/ifdragonscouldtalk
Summary: “Captain,” Spock said in a low voice, and something stiffened up Jim’s spine at his tone. “I believe it would be prudent to leave me behind. Your chances of survival without me increase by-”“Not happening,” he replied firmly.Or, Spock has been stabbed, Jim loves him, and nothing really needs to be said.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Series: Whumptober 2019 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1508297
Comments: 4
Kudos: 242





	Token Arguments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reioka/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for Reioka, along with another installation of my whumptober series! The prompt was Day 23: Bleeding out/Hiding, and rei loves spirk. I hope yall like it!

“In, in, in,” Jim chanted under his breath, shoving Spock’s back even though the Vulcan was being wholly compliant with the command to urge him on faster, glancing over his shoulder anxiously. They had lost their pursuers, but he could still hear their footsteps and shouts echoing through the hallways, so they weren’t too far behind. The door snapped shut behind them and he let out a soft breath, fiddling with the lock. 

“Captain,” Spock said in a low voice, and something stiffened up Jim’s spine at his tone. “I believe it would be prudent to leave me behind. Your chances of survival without me increase by-”

“Not happening,” he replied firmly as he turned to his friend, his First Officer and lover, taking him in as he slowly sank onto the thin bed, one hand clutched over his thigh and the other clenched into a fist, the only indications that he was in pain. The room they had darted into seemed to be some sort of guest bedroom, which was just as well. Spock wouldn’t have been able to make it much farther on his feet. “I’m not leaving you Spock, and you know it, so go ahead and make your token argument since it makes you feel better, and then put that brain to work thinking on a way out of this mess.” Spock raised a disapproving eyebrow, but it lost its impact in a face pale with bloodloss over eyes glazed with pain. 

Jim let out another soft sigh, kneeling in front of him to check the shoddy tourniquet they had wrapped around his upper thigh to stem the bleeding of his nicked femoral artery. The blood would leave a trail right to this room despite them taking precautions to leave several false trails and Jim using his foot to smudge the blood as they ran, making it blend in easier with the dark tiles of the palace, so it was only a matter of time before they were found. They needed to have a plan before then, and preferably before Spock lost consciousness as well. He had already lost more blood than either man was comfortable with. 

“Captain, it is very unlikely that I will make it out of this encounter alive.” There was his token argument, and Jim almost smiled, looking up at beloved indulgently as he tightened the tourniquet where it had come loose. He probably wouldn’t have noticed the slight twitch of the Vulcan’s face, a flicker flinch of pain, if he hadn’t been looking for it, if he didn’t know Spock so well by now. He might’ve been offended by the assumption that there was any way he would leave Spock behind, if he didn’t know it was the only way the Vulcan knew how to cope, clinging to logic and trying to save others. 

“Well, let’s assume that you will anyway, Mr Spock, and come up with a plan that accounts for that.” Spock’s chest expanded in his version of a sigh before he nodded. 

“Very well, Jim. Are our communicators still blocked?” Jim flicked out his comm, both taking a moment to wilt at the static that emerged from it. “Noted. Perhaps, then, the most prudent course of action would be to leave the castle and find shelter until we can discover what has blocked our instruments.”

“We don’t have that kind of time, Spock.” _You don’t have that kind of time_. They both looked down at the wound in Spock’s leg, bleeding steadily with the pulse of his heartbeat onto the ragged mattress. 

It had been a simple diplomatic mission with a warlike race. Their technology was advanced but their weaponry was primitive, swords and spears greeting them on their way through the palace which homed the Queen. Everything had been going fine, until it hadn’t. Jim wasn’t sure what he had said, but the Queen abruptly and unexpectedly decided that she didn’t like them very much, and was going to have them killed for it. Spock had taken a spear to the thigh before either of them could react, and Jim would continue to wonder how he had run on the wound with such speed as they were fleeing the Queen’s guards. Sure, he had seen Spock endure worse wounds, worse pain, but it never ceased to amaze him how much like a pillar he could become in times of need. Jim prayed that there wouldn’t be a day when he would look back and that pillar would be one of salt. 

“We need another option,” Jim said as he stood, looking around the room for any useful tool, anything they could use as a weapon or a means of escape. 

“We do not have many options.” Spock sounded tired, the skin around his eyes just that much pinched, and a stab of panic struck through Jim’s heart. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, not now, not after everything, especially not like this, maybe not ever, so he didn’t bear it, casting it away as he cast his gaze around the room, searching, always searching. “Jim.” Warm hands grabbing his, drawing his attention; the tingling in the back of his mind, gentle, of the bond, nearly unnoticeable due to his psi-null nature. “Jim, there is no point in you dying as well.”

“You’ve not yet died,” Jim pointed out, and knew he was starting to lose it, knew they couldn’t go on like this much longer, pretending that he felt like he was a captain right now when he was just a terrified lover, Romeo in Juliet’s tomb, when his voice trembled just that much. Spock squeezed his hands -- intimate, more intimate than the Vulcan usually allowed, even when they were alone. An expression of trust, of love. 

“Then there is no use in you watching as I do,” he replied, soft, always soft. “It will only hurt you, Jim, and that is the one thing I vowed never to do.” 

“Stop acting like you’re saying goodbye!” Jim couldn’t help it, ripped his hands away because if they stood here any longer he was going to start crying foolishly. 

“We cannot deny the inevitable.”

“No, I was supposed to die first! I’m Human, and I’m the Captain, and _I’m_ supposed to go before you do!” Spock just looked up at him, veiled pain in the lines of his face, blood dripping quiet and slow onto the tiled floor, and Jim collapsed to his knees in it, already stained with green, staring up at the man who had taken him as he was. Something crashed against the door and they both looked over at it, their eyes inexorably drawn back together, teeth clenched, hands fisted. “It’s too late.”

“So it seems,” Spock whispered, and Jim took his hands, bloodied, faintly trembling with his pain, with the emotions he was so incredible at containing. 

They didn’t need to say _I love you._ They already knew, after all. And so, there was silence, until the lock on the door clicked and the panel separating them from the world slid open. 

Only to reveal Scotty and Bones, phasers clutched in hand, scanners out, eyes alert. Jim leapt up, one hand still in Spock’s, eyes wide with shock and residual fear. “Bones?”

“Dammit, Jim, I told you to be careful!” 

“How did you two find us? How did you even know we were in trouble?”

“Enough about tha’ now, lads, Mr Spock looks like he needs some help,” Scotty cut in, interrupting whatever answer Bones might’ve given. Although, Bones didn’t seem all that inclined to give an answer, having also zeroed in on Spock, tricorder already out and scanning as the door slid closed once more. “ _Enterprise,_ four to beam up!” 

It was only later, when Spock was groggy from surgery and nauseous from medication, that Jim had the heart to say what had been pushing at his throat for hours, those words they whispered to each other in the night where they couldn’t affect their working lives. “I love you,” he breathed into Spock’s skin, eyes squeezed shut, lips pressed against Spock’s wrist. Intimate, still too intimate, but Spock was allowing it. He must’ve felt worse than he let on -- hell, that was the story of Spock’s, life, wasn’t it?

“I love you as well, ashayam,” Spock breathed back, eyes half-lidded, ears flushed green with the fever Bones was still trying to bring down. And, quieter still: “Thank you for not leaving me.”

“Never,” Jim replied. “But next time we’re hiding, I’ll still let you make that token argument, because I know how much it means to you.” Spock’s eyes slipped closed, still exhausted from the blood loss, the sedative, maybe trying to escape the emotions Jim was definitely projecting at him. “That’s what love is.”

“Indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to leave your thoughts and feelings, and seek me out on tumblr for more ways to support me!


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